If you read any post on this blog, start with this one. It links to most of the others… I’m a linear thinker. Yet another reason why I struggled in law school. If law school could have been reduced to flow charts, I would have broken records. In sitting down with a friend who’s starting […]

Year-end number crunching is always a dicey proposition. Did I make money? Did I lose money? What do I need to keep doing? Stop doing? Change? (I fear change.) However, my numbers for last year (my fifth full year in business) show a 104% increase in gross revenue! That makes the 39% increase I was […]

I was dusting my office yesterday and realized that office equipment is a big question for people starting their firms. What do I need, what do I NEED, and what do I just want? You can absolutely run your entire practice from a laptop, a printer, and a cell phone. If you have the laptop […]

A business attorney in solo practice who just relocated to a very large city and knows not a soul e-mailed me for marketing advice. My reply… Here’s my recipe for marketing, which has worked for me: 1. You need a kick-ass website. This doesn’t mean you need to spend thousands of dollars a month on […]

My friend, a solo practitioner and mom to two young girls, was recently approached by a female BigLaw senior partner about going to work for the big firm. My friend agreed to go to lunch with the partner, and, concerned that a BigLaw schedule might take her away from her kids, asked the partner (who […]

I gave my senior partner a rather complicated proposed order and I cited to language from the hearing transcript. He took it and read for about four seconds and said: NO NO NO THIS IS F*** THIS IS ALL WRONG WHAT IS THIS He slammed the paper down on his desk, whipped out his pen, […]

Everywhere you turn, it seems the amazingly craptastic job market for lawyers is making the news. Today’s Wall Street Journal article (“Law Grads Face a Brutal Job Market”) points out that 2001 graduates had about a 50/50 chance of landing a job. This is a swift kick in the crotch to those graduates who now […]

It depends. Don’t we lawyers LOVE that answer? But seriously, it really does depend. In full disclosure, I do charge for consultations. I didn’t at first. I do now. Yes, people pay. Yes, I’ve lost clients who expect a free consultation. No, I don’t lose sleep over those clients. Yes, those clients who do pay […]

This is among the most important issues you will face as a solo practitioner. If you aren’t getting paid, the rest doesn’t matter. It seems to me there are two extremes of newly minted lawyers. Mucho Bravado and Wee Chickenlittle. Mucho Bravado was the PITA in school who always thought he was smarter than everyone, […]